A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19.

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms 'physical distancing' and 'social distancing'. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.

Of Pandemics and Zombies: The Influence of Prior Concepts on COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Behaviors.

We use a concepts and categories research perspective to explore how prior conceptual knowledge influences thinking about a novel disease, namely COVID-19. We collected measures of how similar people thought COVID-19 was to several existing concepts that may have served as other possible comparison points for the pandemic. We also collected participants' self-reported engagement in pandemic-related behaviors. We found that thinking the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to other serious disease outbreaks predicted greater social distancing and mask-wearing, whereas likening COVID-19 to the seasonal flu predicted engaging in significantly fewer of these behaviors. Thinking of COVID-19 as similar to zombie apocalypse scenarios or moments of major societal upheaval predicted stocking-up behaviors, but not disease mitigation behaviors. These early category comparisons influenced behaviors over a six-month span of longitudinal data collection. Our findings suggest that early conceptual comparisons track with emergent disease categories over time and influence the behaviors people engage in related to the disease. Our research illustrates how early concept formation influences behaviors over time, and suggests ways for public health experts to communicate with the public about emergent diseases.

Bring out your experts: The relationship between perceived expert causal understanding and pandemic behaviors.

In the complex modern world, people's understanding of how things work is often outsourced to other people. We explore how people's perceptions of expert causal understanding of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic predicted their pandemic-related behaviors. As part of a larger longitudinal study, we collected data at four time points that measured participants' perceptions of experts' causal understanding of COVID-19, along with those participants' self-reported pandemic-related health behaviors. We found that perceiving experts to understand the causal mechanism of transmission was predictive of engaging in more social distancing, advice following, hand washing, and mask wearing. Believing experts could intervene and treat the symptoms or underlying cause of COVID-19 was negatively associated with these same behaviors, but to a lesser degree. These results held above and beyond political ideology and were overall similar for people who perceived themselves to be at high or low risk for COVID-19. This research provides new insights into how people's behaviors are guided by perceptions of others' understanding and highlights important implications for expert health-risk communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

In Defense of Tradition: Religiosity, Conservatism, and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage in North America.

Arguments opposing same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds. In five studies conducted in the United States and Canada (combined N = 1,673), we observed that religious opposition to same-sex marriage was explained, at least in part, by conservative ideology and linked to sexual prejudice. In Studies 1 and 2, we discovered that the relationship between religiosity and opposition to same-sex marriage was mediated by explicit sexual prejudice. In Study 3, we saw that the mediating effect of sexual prejudice was linked to political conservatism. Finally, in Studies 4a and 4b we examined the ideological underpinnings of religious opposition to same-sex marriage in more detail by taking into account two distinct aspects of conservative ideology. Results revealed that resistance to change was more important than opposition to equality in explaining religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

We agree and we disagree, which is exactly what most people do most of the time.

Humans are continually diverging and converging with respect to each other. Research across many domains suggests that differentiation and integration are aspects of a more complex set of dynamics, and are not step-wise but interdependent and continuous. Research on conformity in particular reveals that divergence and dissent are forms of cooperation, reflecting concerns for both individual and group integrity.

On not airing our dirty laundry: Intergroup contexts suppress ingroup criticism among strongly identified group members.

Not every situation affords the appropriate setting to articulate group problems, and I predicted that strongly identified members would be particularly sensitive to the intergroup context in which ingroup criticism is expressed. In Study 1, strongly but not weakly identified members reduced criticism of their ingroup when communicating with an outgroup (vs. ingroup) audience, and this effect was mediated by concerns for the reputation of the group. In Study 2, heightening the salience of intergroup competition suppressed criticism among group members high (but not low) in the solidarity component of identification, even though they were communicating with an ingroup audience. These findings show that even when criticizing their group, strongly identified members are attuned to the collective interest: they are more willing to articulate problems to an insider than when asked to do so by an outgroup member or when reminded of a competitive intergroup dynamic.

More to morality than mutualism: consistent contributors exist and they can inspire costly generosity in others.

Studies of economic decision-making have revealed the existence of consistent contributors, who always make contributions to the collective good. It is difficult to understand such behavior in terms of mutualistic motives. Furthermore, consistent contributors can elicit apparently altruistic behavior from others. Therefore, although mutualistic motives are likely an important contributor to moral action, there is more to morality than mutualism.

The importance of moral construal: moral versus non-moral construal elicits faster, more extreme, universal evaluations of the same actions.

Over the past decade, intuitionist models of morality have challenged the view that moral reasoning is the sole or even primary means by which moral judgments are made. Rather, intuitionist models posit that certain situations automatically elicit moral intuitions, which guide moral judgments. We present three experiments showing that evaluations are also susceptible to the influence of moral versus non-moral construal. We had participants make moral evaluations (rating whether actions were morally good or bad) or non-moral evaluations (rating whether actions were pragmatically or hedonically good or bad) of a wide variety of actions. As predicted, moral evaluations were faster, more extreme, and more strongly associated with universal prescriptions-the belief that absolutely nobody or everybody should engage in an action-than non-moral (pragmatic or hedonic) evaluations of the same actions. Further, we show that people are capable of flexibly shifting from moral to non-moral evaluations on a trial-by-trial basis. Taken together, these experiments provide evidence that moral versus non-moral construal has an important influence on evaluation and suggests that effects of construal are highly flexible. We discuss the implications of these experiments for models of moral judgment and decision-making.

Rapid social perception is flexible: approach and avoidance motivational states shape P100 responses to other-race faces.

Research on person categorization suggests that people automatically and inflexibly categorize others according to group memberships, such as race. Consistent with this view, research using electroencephalography (EEG) has found that White participants tend to show an early difference in processing Black versus White faces. Yet, new research has shown that these ostensibly automatic biases may not be as inevitable as once thought and that motivational influences may be able to eliminate these biases. It is unclear, however, whether motivational influences shape the initial biases or whether these biases can only be modulated by later, controlled processes. Using EEG to examine the time course of biased processing, we manipulated approach and avoidance motivational states by having participants pull or push a joystick, respectively, while viewing White or Black faces. Consistent with previous work on own-race bias, we observed a greater P100 response to White than Black faces; however, this racial bias was attenuated in the approach condition. These data suggest that rapid social perception may be flexible and can be modulated by motivational states.

Indirect goal priming is more powerful than explicit instruction in children.

This study examined the relative efficacy of explicit instruction and indirect priming on young children's behavior in a task that required a series of choices between a small immediate reward and a larger delayed reward. One hundread and six 4-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions involving one of two goals (maximize rewards or obtain immediate rewards) and one of two types of instruction (indirect priming using stories or explicit verbal instructions). Children were more likely to make goal-congruent choices as a result of indirect priming, but there was no effect of explicit instruction, suggesting that indirect approaches to changing young children's behavior may be more effective than direct approaches under some circumstances. These results have implications for understanding the dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down influences on self-regulation early in development.

Facing social identity change: interactive effects of current and projected collective identification on expectations regarding future self-esteem and psychological well-being.

We hypothesized that prospective changes in social identity that involve transitioning out of a currently valued group would be associated with negative expectations regarding future states, but that this effect would be mitigated among individuals who expect to belong to a future in-group of similar importance. Consistent with predictions, strongly identified young adults in two studies projected significantly lower self-esteem/psychological well-being in old age than weakly identified young adults. Critically, however, this effect was fully attenuated if they expected to identify with their future aged in-group when they were old. Study 2 showed that the capacity for projected identification to buffer projected well-being among strongly identified young adults was contingent on their membership in the future in-group being highly salient. Analyses of participants' written descriptions of old age (Study 1) and a valence manipulation (Study 2) indicated that these effects were not attributable to the anticipated valence of future selves/states, but rather to the value placed on current and future group memberships.

Modulation of the fusiform face area following minimal exposure to motivationally relevant faces: evidence of in-group enhancement (not out-group disregard).

Studies have shown that fusiform face area (FFA) activity increases with visual expertise. We present an fMRI study showing that faces from a social category made relevant by an experimental manipulation (members of an experimentally created in-group) preferentially recruited the FFA even when they were matched in exposure to face stimuli from a less significant social category (members of an experimentally created out-group). Faces were randomly assigned to groups and fully counterbalanced so that no perceptual cues allowed participants to visually distinguish category membership. The results revealed a pattern of in-group enhancement (not out-group disregard), such that the FFA was selectively engaged following the presentation of in-group compared with out-group or unaffiliated control faces even when the intergroup distinction was arbitrary, and exposure to in-group and out-group faces was equivalent and brief. In addition, individual differences in FFA activity for in-group versus out-group faces were correlated with recognition memory differences for in-group and out-group faces. The effects of group membership on the FFA were not affected by task instruction to respond to in-group or out-group members and were functionally dissociated from early visual processing in the primary visual cortex. This study provides evidence that the FFA is sensitive to top-down influences and may be involved in subordinate level (vs. superordinate level) encoding of stimuli in the absence of long-term exposure or explicit task instructions.

Loyal deviance: testing the normative conflict model of dissent in social groups.

The normative conflict model predicts that expressions of dissent within groups can be motivated by the collective interest and that strongly identified members may dissent from group norms if and when they are perceived to be harmful to the collective. We present convergent evidence from four studies in support of the model. Study 1 investigated retrospective reports of disagreements and found that strongly identified members reported collectively oriented motives for expressing disagreement within their groups. Studies 2a and 2b provided experimental tests of the prediction that strongly identified group members are willing to dissent when they reflect on how a norm could harm their group but not when they reflect on negative individualistic consequences of the same norm. Finally, Study 3 replicated these effects using a correlational design that measured actual opinion expression in an ostensible online chat room.

Neural correlates of reflection on goal states: the role of regulatory focus and temporal distance.

Effective self-regulation requires the ability to consider alternate goal states in order to adapt to shifting circumstances. Previous research on goal reflection has identified goal-type dissociations in brain regions broadly associated with self-projection. Importantly, however, there is a need to distinguish activation differences due to recruitment of distinct processes from activations that reflect common processes with varying levels of recruitment. The fact that different types of goals tend to covary naturally with time allowed us to vary the difficulty of goal reflection across content domains. Participants in an fMRI study thought about promotion or prevention goals at three time points. Goals that varied in terms of content, time-frame, valence, and abstractness but were difficult to construct (relative to other goals) activated an area of dorsal medial PFC, suggesting that this region may support general-purpose projective processes. In contrast, goals that were easy to construct activated a region of dorsolateral PFC involved in domain-general memory retrieval. Importantly, we also observed domain-specific effects of goal type and temporal distance; promotion goals were associated with heightened activity in medial PFC, short-term goals activated precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex, and longer-term goals activated frontal areas, including ventrolateral PFC and orbitofrontal cortex.

The neural substrates of in-group bias: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation.

Classic minimal-group studies found that people arbitrarily assigned to a novel group quickly display a range of perceptual, affective, and behavioral in-group biases. We randomly assigned participants to a mixed-race team and used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain regions involved in processing novel in-group and out-group members independently of preexisting attitudes, stereotypes, or familiarity. Whereas previous research on intergroup perception found amygdala activity--typically interpreted as negativity--in response to stigmatized social groups, we found greater activity in the amygdala, fusiform gyri, orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal striatum when participants viewed novel in-group faces than when they viewed novel out-group faces. Moreover, activity in orbitofrontal cortex mediated the in-group bias in self-reported liking for the faces. These in-group biases in neural activity were not moderated by race or by whether participants explicitly attended to team membership or race, a finding suggesting that they may occur automatically. This study helps clarify the role of neural substrates involved in perceptual and affective in-group biases.

On being both with us and against us: a normative conflict model of dissent in social groups.

Although past research has demonstrated a positive relationship between collective identification and normative conformity, there may be circumstances in which strongly identified members do not conform but instead choose to challenge group norms. This article proposes a normative conflict model, which distinguishes between nonconformity due to dissent (challenging norms to change them) and nonconformity due to disengagement (distancing oneself from the group). The normative conflict model predicts that strongly identified members are likely to challenge group norms when they experience conflict between norms and important alternate standards for behavior, in particular when they perceive norms as being harmful to the group. Data in support of the model are reviewed, mechanisms by which external variables may influence dissent in social groups are elaborated, and the model is linked to contemporary perspectives on collective identity.

Identifying Systematic Disobedience in Milgram's Obedience Experiments: A Meta-Analytic Review.

A meta-analysis of data from eight of Mil-gram's obedience experiments reveals previously undocumented systematicity in the behavior of disobedient participants. In all studies, disobedience was most likely at 150 v, the point at which the shocked "learner" first requested to be released. Further illustrating the importance of the 150-v point, obedience rates across studies covaried with rates of disobedience at 150 v, but not at any other point; as obedience decreased, disobedience at 150 v increased. In contrast, disobedience was not associated with the learner's escalating expressions of pain. This analysis identifies a critical decision point in the obedience paradigm and suggests that disobedient participants perceived the learner's right to terminate the experiment as overriding the experimenter's orders, a finding with potential implications for the treatment of prisoners.

Increasing implicit self-esteem through classical conditioning.

Implicit self-esteem is the automatic, nonconscious aspect of self-esteem. This study demonstrated that implicit self-esteem can be increased using a computer game that repeatedly pairs self-relevant information with smiling faces. These findings, which are consistent with principles of classical conditioning, establish the associative and interpersonal nature of implicit self-esteem and demonstrate the potential benefit of applying basic learning principles in this domain.